This Update Wednesday brings about a change to the Google Drive Android app that's all about moving files around. Let's get to it.

What's New

Google intends for Drive to serve as your file manager in the cloud, but for ages now the Android app has limited us to moving files around through drop-down menus. Now it supports basic drag and drop.

You should get a pop-up explaining the new feature after making the jump to 2.2, but in case you don't, here's how it works.

To be honest, I never really expected to have anything to say about a teardown of the Drive companion apps, but here we are. Google uses Docs, Sheets, and Slides to give Android a mostly seamless editing experience for each of Drive's primary document types. They've gone through a steady set of improvements since launching in April and June of last year, either keeping pace or progressively catching up with the features offered by their web counterparts.

Update Wednesday went by with merely a whisper this week, barely registering more than a handful of fresh versions. Out of the group, we did get bumps for each of the Google Drive companion apps: Docs, Sheets, and Slides. All three received minor interface adjustments, the more notable changes went solely to Docs, which also gained rich editing support in Office Compatibility Mode and the ability to insert links into Google Documents.

In an update to Gmail's web interface, Google has added support for attaching files stored in Drive to your emails like conventional attachments. Before, you had no choice but to share Drive files as links or upload them yourself. This is especially useful when sharing files to people who aren't using Gmail and therefore don't enjoy the smooth integration with Drive that Gmail has. For those worried that Google would abandon Gmail with the recent focus on Inbox, this is encouraging news.

Google has pushed out a number of tweaks to its suite of mobile office apps: Docs, Sheets, and Slides. Even Drive, the place where edited documents are stored, hasn't gone untouched. Some of these features are nice to see, so let's dive in.

What's New

Update: Docs, Sheets, and Slides all have full hamburger menu icons now.

In Docs, an option to select line spacing has appeared in the "Paragraph" section of the app.

Google My Maps allows you to create your own custom maps, which you can use to chart out a vacation, plan for a difficult hike, or prepare for a lengthy road trip. There's an Android app dedicated entirely to the task, but in a move that makes your creations even more accessible, Google has given them a prominent location inside of Drive on the web.

Now when you go to create a new document, you can produce a new map by going to More > Google My Maps.

Update: As it turns out, this offer applies to recently-purchased Chromebook purchases too. If you have not yet claimed your free Google Drive storage, you might want to head over to the goodies page to redeem your 1TB right away.

If you're like me, you keep quite a bit of the files you interact with on your mobile devices saved on Google Drive. The service has gotten spiffier over the years, and Google has done its best to make interacting with the storage feel as though you're tinkering with something saved locally.

Most of us don't want to think of Android without Google Play services. There's a good reason for that, without all of the tools Google offers, we would miss out on features like push notifications, integrated maps, and even newer things like Google Fit. Developers keep asking for more and Google is answering that call. With the latest release of Google Play services, new features are coming to Fit, Maps, Drive, And Wallet.

The downside to cloud services is that they're of absolutely no use when they're not available. Today Google Docs, Drive, Sheets, and Slides have all been unavailable for some of the people that have come to depend on them.

Google is aware of the issue, and it's showing a service disruption for each service on its apps status dashboard page. This is delineated in the screenshot below by the presence of an orange icon next to Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

We've already seen about a half-dozen Google apps leaked in a Nexus 6 system dump, but we haven't taken a look at Google Drive yet. The app does have some material design in store though - as with the others - it's still in testing, so anything could change. That said, it's worth taking a look. Google Drive has implemented many of the new material design paradigms that make the app cleaner, leaner, and easier to use.